Global Nerdy

If you use your mobile devices as much as we use ours, you’ll want to check out these tips and tricks for making the most of your Android and Apple phones and tablets. From maximizing your battery life, to things you didn’t know your mobile or Apple earphones could do, and what Lifehacker considers to be the best audio recording tool for Android, we think you’ll find something useful in this collection.

Tips and tricks for extending your battery life

Maximizing battery life has always been a concern of mobile technology users, and it’s become a more popular topic of discussion since the TSA revived the “you’ll need to show your mobile devices powered on at security” edict at selected airports. Here are some tips from Pocket-Lint and The Guardian on get the most out of your battery’s milliamp-hours.

10 things you didn’t know your iPhone could do

10 things you didn’t know you could do with Android

13 Apple earphone tricks

They’re not just earphones, but they’re remote control devices for your iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, and even your Mac! Learn about all the functionality you can control from your Apple earphones (and even some earphones not made by Apple).

Lifehacker says Cogi is the best voice recorder for Android

Cogi functions as a standard audio recorder, but shines for recording long meetings or other lengthy events, where you want to record only the “highlights” — key snippets that are 5, 15, 30, or 45 seconds long. Its creators knew that audio doesn’t always capture everything in a meeting, so they included ancillary tools to write notes in your session or capture the whiteboard with your phone’s camera. Best of all, it’s free!

Creative Commons photo by TribeHut. Click to see the original.

Tablets aren’t outselling traditional desktop and laptop PCs, but Gartner’s most recent forecast for global device shipments says that day is coming soon. Their prediction for this year is that PCs will still outsell tablets, with 308 million desktops and laptops shipping this year vs. 256 million iPads, Samsung Galaxy Tabs, Kindle Fires. However, in 2015, they expect tablets to edge out PCs, with 321 million shipments versus 317 million PCs.

TechCrunch have published Gartner’s data in tabular form, and we’ve taken their tables and turned them into easier-to-read graphs. This first graph looks at worldwide device shipments for 2013 through 2015 (with 2014’s and 2015’s numbers being projections), and without smartphones (you’ll see why we excluded them in a moment):

Remember, these are shipments, which refers to the number of devices sent to retailers, as opposed to sales, which is the number of devices actually sold to customers. As TechCrunch say, “A shipment is a guess on how many will be sold based on previous performance, which means that sometimes if sales are disappointing/surprisingly good there will be a correction, with lower/higher shipments in subsequent periods.”

Smartphone shipments dwarf the shipments of other device categories, which is we excluded them in the graph above, so that you could better see the lines for the other devices. This second graph of worldwide device shipments includes smartphones:

In their report, Gartner makes the following observations and predictions:

• The tablet market is showing maturation, and in more developed markets, tablets are now in the “late adopter” phase of the technology lifecycle. Being in this later phase is expected to affect their rate of sales, and what sorts of tablet models and features will be in demand.
• The tablet market is shifting, and according to Gartner analyst Ranjit Atwal, lower price points will drive the next wave of adoption, not superior functionality.
• The tablet market will have a relative slowdown this year, even though the total number of shipments is expected to increase almost 24% over 2013.
• Smartphones will account for 66% of all mobile sales in 2014, and by 2018, they’ll account for 88%.
• Android shipments are expected to rise 30% this year, and iOS shipments are expected to rise 15%.
• Windows Phone is expected to get 4% market share this year, with this figure climbing to 10% in 2018.

In addition to taking iOS development with Swift for a test ride, I’ve been doing some exploratory Android development as well. I find myself agreeing with this assessment of iOS vs. Android development on TechCrunch:

“Android has its advantages, but overall, it remains significantly easier to write good iOS apps than good Android apps.”

There are some great ideas in Android, and some areas where its APIs have an advantage over iOS’ (networking, notably — but as the TechCrunch article points out, third-party libraries have stepped up), but working with Java and Eclipse really tarnish the development experience. I know some people love that combo, but it ain’t my thing.

As for the photo above (it’s of a training simulator for prostate exams), I initially used it to describe my recent experience trying to cancel a mobile subscription and my feelings about telco customer service in general. I thought it applied equally to my feelings about Android development, and hey, I’m not letting a good pic go to waste!

Creative Commons photo by M.O. Stevens. Click to see the source.

Following reports of increased activity by Al-Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is requiring security personnel at undisclosed airports in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa to not allow uncharged portable electronics aboard flights. Passengers boarding U.S.-bound aircraft will be required to switch on devices such as laptops, phones, and tablets in order to prove that they are what they appear to be and not disguised explosive devices.

Our recommendation to those of you traveling by air — even you’re flying only within the US — is to make sure that any portable electronics you bring with you are ready to operate at a moment’s notice when you take them through the security check. This means…

Charging your devices before you go to the airport. Ideally, you should do this overnight before leaving. Even plugging a completely drained smartphone or tablet for a half hour should be sufficient for the airport check; we’ve observed that most modern smartphones can be brought up to 50% charge in about an hour.

In spite of what some popular reports say, putting your phone or tablet in “Airplane Mode” won’t speed up the charging time very much. You may have seen articles that tell you that devices in Airplane Mode (which turns off their cellular and wifi radio units) charge twice as quickly, but test have shown that the speed boost you get is closer to 2%. You might as well keep your device out of Airplane Mode and not miss any important emails or calls.

Get a USB cigarette lighter power adapter. If you’re driving (or being driven) to the airport and haven’t yet had a chance to charge your mobile device, take advantage of the in-car cigarette lighter (nowadays called the “power socket”) and use it to charge your phone or tablet. These USB chargers are cheap and available just about everywhere — even in gas stations and convenience stores. They’ve saved me a lot of trouble more than once.

If you’re a heavy mobile user, you should consider getting an external battery pack. It’ll ensure that your device can get through airport security as well as a day of long conversations or heavy mobile computing. This recent Cnet article covers the highest-capacity battery packs available, including the beast pictured above: the RAVPower Element, which gives you 10,400 mAH (milliamp-Hours) of power — “enough juice to charge an iPhone from empty more than five times”. For a mere $30 at Amazon, that’s a lot of bang for the buck.

Keep your devices charged, and have a safe trip!

This Wednesday at 1:00 p.m. EDT, we’ll be taking part in a webinar that our partner Pomeroy will be co-sponsoring with InformationWeek titled Uncovering the True Cost of Your Mobile Telecommunications, where we’ll talk about the cost of enterprise telecom and what you can do about it.

Here’s the abstract for the webinar:

The proliferation of mobile platforms and devices in the workplace has resulted in a dizzying array of carrier plans for organizations to track and manage. Telecom expense management tools intended to simplify administration have frustrated managers due to the time, resources and manual processes required. Expense management has become more difficult, and costs harder to control – an unsustainable situation given these costs are now the largest, fastest growing item in the IT budget.

The webinar will be hosted by Martin “Marty” Ezzo, Pomeroy’s Practice Director for Enterprise Mobility. Marty has more than 25 years of industry experience developing, communicating and executing corporate strategic vision. His wealth of experience in the Information Technology arena includes leading high-powered teams in the development, implementation and operation of large complex solutions in the area of IT Service Management, specializing in End-user Services, Systems Management, Data Center Operations, Enterprise Mobility and IT Outsourcing.

GSG will provide additional subject matter expertise to the webinar in the form of Joey deVilla, GSG’s Platform Evangelist. He’ll provide additional information throughout the session, including industry analyst reports, a “state of the union” report on mobile technology in the workplace, GSG’s approach to managing mobile telecom expenses, and case studies of organizations who’ve used GSG’s telecom expense management solutions with great success.

The webinar is free to attend, and will take place this Wednesday, June 25th at 1:00 p.m. Eastern (10:00 a.m. Pacific, GMT-4). You do have to register to attend, and you can do so on InformationWeek’s webinar registration site.

You might not think it’s a wise idea to list your World of Warcraft achievements on your resume, but it seems to have paid off for Stephen Gillett, who says it’s helped him land jobs at Corbis, theh his CIO job at Starbucks, and now the COO position at Symantec. In case you were wondering, he’s a level 70 paladin and priest with a focus on healing.

Here’s what the recent CNNMoney profile on him has to say:

Gillett said he includes his World of Warcraft achievements on his resume, because it’s not just about role-playing games. It shows he exercises leadership in both the physical and virtual realms. Plus, he understands the current societal fascination with earning points and interactive entertainment.

As a guild master, his current duties and responsibilities include organizing dungeon raids and managing the group’s virtual bank. And he has a knack for recruiting key talent. Think mages and warlocks.

Those skills transferred to his position as Starbucks’ CIO, Gillett says. In that role, he was tasked with saving the company’s suffering technology assets. Cash registers were outdated. Computers were scarce. Customer sales were down.

Gillett’s answer: Take Starbucks executives on a field trip to the Irvine, Calif., headquarters of World of Warcraft maker Activision Blizzard (ATVI, Tech30). The goal was to expose them to a business model that capitalizes on gaming.

I’m glad to see that all that time invested in WoW (I’m judging based on his level 70 status) paid off. It doesn’t always work out that way: